http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
COMMENTATORS are wringing their hands with consternation over whether
the nation can heal. That is the wrong question. The question is whether
Al Gore and his forces will ever lay down their arms. Wounds cannot heal
when they are constantly being re-injured.

It is immensely ironic that the candidate who has caused all this
post-election discord is the one asserting victimhood. For Al Gore to
plead injury at the hands of George Bush is like Bill Clinton claiming
that he was the victim of Ken Starr, Linda Tripp and Willard, for that
matter.

When you think about it, Gore has been given innumerable
opportunities to change the outcome of the election, yet he says he's
the one who has been cheated. I wonder if he acted like this on the
school playground. Just think of all the unwarranted advantages Gore has
received. Gore is the one who:

benefited when the pro-Gore media prematurely called the race
in his favor, discouraging untold thousands of Bush supporters from
voting in Florida and elsewhere;

got an automatic recount because the election was so close, and
still lost;

persuaded a few heavily Democratic counties to conduct a full
manual recount when they were clearly unauthorized by law to do so
because the partial manual recount revealed no machine error;

coerced (through threats of lawsuits) a few other heavily
Democratic counties to proceed with manual recounts, even though they
had decided not to do so;

received the benefit of at least one of those counties changing
every imaginable rule in midstream to count every questionable ballot --
and then some -- for Gore;

systematically torpedoed absentee military ballots statewide
because he knew they would favor Bush.

was unable to convince a Democratic circuit judge to change the
Florida law to force the Secretary of State to accept late-filed
returns; but

conned the Democratic Florida Supreme Court into
unconstitutionally changing the Florida election law after the election
to establish a new deadline for the Secretary of State to accept
returns;

was still trailing after all of these gifts;

has friends who are unconscionably trying to interfere with
Bush's pledged presidential electors;

couldn't hoodwink two Democratic circuit judges into
disqualifying thousands of absentee ballots in Seminole and Martin
counties for technical reasons;

couldn't convince another Democratic circuit judge that he'd
sustained his legal burden of proof in multifarious election contest
cases; but

was given another temporary reprieve by four rabid activist
Florida Supreme Court justices when they disregarded the order of the
United States Supreme Court and removed yet another deadline -- their
own deadline -- and ordered statewide partial recount anarchy. In doing
so, the Florida Court completely obliterated its state's election
contest law in trying to bestow victory on its ideological soulmate.

Gore has had everything handed to him on a silver platter, and
still hasn't been able to scrounge up sufficient votes to surpass
president-elect Bush. But he's still trying.

After all this exhausting indulgence, Gore and his media enablers are
bellyaching that some 9,000 "undervotes" still have not been counted.
Keep in mind that Democratic Miami-Dade County made its own decision not
to resume the manual recount of those votes because they couldn't meet
even the extended deadline established by the Florida Supremes.

Probably the greatest Gore myth of this saga -- and that is some tall
order -- is the assertion that these 9,000 ballots have been improperly
ignored. Please understand this: the tabulation machines rejected those
ballots because they were supposed to reject those ballots. They
were not ignored by accident. The voters did not follow the directions
to punch fully through the chads, and therefore did not convert their
ballots into legal votes. That is the law as it existed in Florida on
the day of the election. Of all the rule breaking advocated by the Gore
team, this one is the poisonous tree corrupting so much post-election
fruit.

Now, tell me, who's the victim here? But just look at the
contrasting, post-election presidential demeanor of president-elect
George Bush, who's taken it on the chin at almost every turn. Isn't it
enormously gratifying and refreshing to know that in a little over a
month we are going to have a statesman occupying the White House again?
I, for one, can hardly
wait.

JWR contributor
David Limbaugh
is an
attorney
practicing in
Cape Girardeau,
Missouri,
and a
political
analyst
and
commentator. Send your comments to him by clicking here.